The price of eating out jumped 0.7% last month — a staggering pace not seen since 1981, inflation data out Tuesday shows.
Why it matters: Demand is soaring, but so are the costs restaurants and other food providers face — for ingredients, supplies and staff, which are all in short supply. The dynamic is playing out on the menu in the form of pricier meals.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Stable Road Acquisition Company and its merger target, space transportation company Momentus, for making false claims.
Why it matters: This is the first enforcement action from the regulator against a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) amid rising concerns over the flurry of such vehicles and mergers in the past year.
HBO and HBO Max led all Hollywood studios with 130 nominations for the 73rd annual Emmy awards, the Television Academy said Tuesday. If you add up the nominations for networks owned by Disney, including Disney+, Hulu, FX, Nat Geo, and ABC, the company topped HBO and HBO Max with 146 nominations.
Why it matters: It's an important milestone for both companies, which are now competing with several tech giants for TV eyeballs, including Netflix, Apple and Amazon. Netflix took home 129 nominations.
Deer are the deadliest animal in America, causing about 200 human deaths per year — as well as 30,000 injuries — when they collide with cars. That's a tragedy; it's also a market failure.
Why it matters: Rather than having deer running around and killing people, it would be much better — and much more delicious — were we to be killing the deer and eating them.
Gabriel Snyder, formerly of The New Republic and The Atlantic, is launching a new daily media newsletter that will cover the media business in New York City.
Why it matters: The media beat has gotten more competitive over the past few years as independent journalists and media companies launched dozens of new newsletters analyzing the business.
Reviews can help people decide which games to buy, but for some gamers with disabilities crucial questions about accessibility are not being answered by writers.
Why it matters: Whether or not a game includes options like alternative control schemes or color-coded systems can be a key factor in some people's abilities to play a game.
Actress Mj Rodriguez became the first openly transgender Emmy Award nominee in a major acting category on Tuesday, earning the nomination for outstanding lead actress in a drama series for her role in FX's "Pose."
Driving the news: Only two other openly trans performers have received Emmy nominations, per Variety: Laverne Cox in 2014 for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series, and Rain Valdez for short form comedy or drama actress in 2020.
The State Department and five other federal agencies issued an updated advisory on Tuesday warning that businesses with supply chains and investments in the Chinese region of Xinjiang run a "high risk" of violating U.S. laws on forced labor.
Why it matters: The Biden administration is moving aggressively to ensure that American businesses, many of which use supply chains deeply intertwined with the Chinese economy, are not complicit in the genocide of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities.
The New York Times is facing several critical labor battles, all coming to a head this summer.
Why it matters: The Times serves as a bellwether for other media unions trying to negotiate complicated matters such as compensation, DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) and whether journalists own their intellectual property.
Barbara Peng has been named president of Insider Inc., CEO and founder Henry Blodget tells Axios.
Why it matters: Peng most recently served as president of Insider Intelligence, the company's research arm. She will continue to oversee Insider Intelligence, which Blodget says is a $60 million+ business, as well as Insider, the business and tech publication.
The Observer, formerly the New York Observer, plans to relaunch in the next few months with a new editor-in-chief, Axios has learned.
Details: Meg Marco, most recently a senior editor at ProPublica, has been hired to help the outlet reclaim its identity as a chronicler of powerful people and influence.
Private equity funds are almost never liable for the misdeeds or financial responsibilities of their portfolio companies, because of how such deals are structured. In the case of for-profit college investments, that means taxpayers have been left holding the bag.
Driving the news: The Biden administration recently canceled $55.6 million in student loan debt for fraud victims of three for-profit colleges.
Prices for goods and services, excluding food and energy, shot up 0.9% in June on a month-over-month basis, according to the Core Consumer Price Index reading published Tuesday morning.
Why it matters: That’s an uptick from May’s monthly change of 0.7%. Economists were expecting an increase of 0.4%.
United Airlines and the regional carrier Mesa Air Group this morning announced conditional plans to buy 100 planes each — and an option for more — from the electric plane startup Heart Aerospace.
Driving the news: The two airlines are also investors in a $35 million Series A funding round for the Swedish startup that hopes to bring a 19-seat electric plane into service by 2026.
The lithium-metal battery startup SES just announced it's going public via merging with the special purpose acquisition company Ivanhoe Capital Acquisition Corp. at an implied valuation of $3.6 billion.
Why it matters: SES, which spun out of MIT nearly a decade ago, is backed by investors including General Motors and Hyundai in a sign of how big automakers are investing in battery tech and future supply.
Twitter reopened its New York office as well as its San Francisco headquarters Monday, though employees will be able to continue working remotely as long as they wish.
Why it matters: Tech companies are trying to accommodate both those employees who want to return to an office and those who have come to prefer working remotely. Twitter is among the companies giving workers the choice.
Wages are surging as labor shortages give workers leverage to ask for more money. One big company sees this news as an opportunity to jack up prices.
Why it matters: A raise in your pay doesn’t mean much if there’s a commensurate increase in the prices of goods and services — your spending power will be unchanged.
There's a fresh data pointon how corporate America fared during the pandemic year. Businesses with more diverse boards came out on top, according to data provided first to Axios by BoardReady, a nonprofit.
Why it matters: It adds to a ballooning body of research that shows that generally better business comes alongside boardrooms that are less old, male and white.
The post-pandemic working world is rapidly normalizing remote work— but the next generation of workers is wary of the change.
What's happening: Transitioning to remote work is far easier for veteran employees who have already developed social capital in the workplace and know how a company operates. Freshly minted members of the workforce stand to miss out on those valuable skills and opportunities if they can't come back to the office.
MeWe, a free and subscription-based social media platform that bills itself as a privacy-focused alternative to Facebook, is looking to raise two new rounds of cash to help fuels its growth, its founder and chief evangelist Mark Weinstein tells Axios.
Driving the news: The company is in talks with strategic investors, mostly venture capital and private equity groups, about a round it hopes to raise this year between $10 and $30 million, Weinstein says. He's hoping to raise even more cash, up to $75 million, the following year.
U.S. and European financial regulatorshave alludedto revamping oversight as a way to keep a lid on leveraged lending excesses. But doing so would be complicated since much of the world’s risk-taking doesn’t happen directly in regulated institutions like banks.
Why it matters: The European Central Bank’s supervisory chair, Andrea Enria, acknowledged in a recent speech that when central banks’ unprecedented market support goes away it could leave markets exposed to price corrections. Put another way, bubbles could pop.
Several hospitals have mounted a legal battle against the company that makes the da Vinci surgical robot, alleging its monopoly position forces hospitals to buy its maintenance services and replacement parts at inflated prices even though cheaper options exist.
Driving the news: In one allegation, a hospital says Intuitive Surgical remotely shut down a hospital's surgical robot "in the middle of a procedure" which forced the surgeon "to convert the procedure to open surgery with the patient on the operating table," after the hospital said it was considering a service contract with a third party.
Lawsuits filed Monday are seeking damages from Dow Chemical and its successor company over a bug killer that allegedly causes brain damage in children, AP reports.
Why it matters: Chlorpyrifos is approved for use on over 80 crops, per AP. But studies show the pesticide damages the brains of fetuses and children. It was banned for household use in 2001.
The Trump Organization has removed chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg from leadership positions in its subsidiary firms following his indictment on tax-related charges, the Wall Street Journal first reported Monday.
Why it matters: New York prosecutors have been pushing to press the longtime Trump associate, who's pleaded not guilty to charges including grand larceny, to cooperate in their investigation into the Trump organization.
